With Riggs Out, GOP Senate Race Is a Spat Between Issa, Fong

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, April 11, 1998

After weeks of being upstaged by the free spenders in the governor's race, the three Republicans looking to scrap with Democrat Barbara Boxer in the fall Senate race were out on display last week.

Well, two of them were, anyway. But it was North Coast Congressman Frank Riggs who got the biggest headlines, and he didn't even have to leave his office on Capitol Hill.

Riggs, a late entry into the race in February, finally had a flash of reality and dropped out of a contest that even his strongest supporters knew he wasn't going to win. He also said he will leave politics entirely and move his family permanently to the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., where the job market for abruptly retired Republican congressmen is a lot stronger than in his home town of Windsor.

That leaves the field clear for Darrell Issa and Matt Fong, who have been snarling and snapping at each other for months. Despite Fong's call last week for a kinder, gentler campaign season, it's hard to find anyone who thinks the Republican primary race will be any type of a lovefest when the days dwindle down to a precious few in May and June.

The continuing sleaze-o-rama in Washington, with the "all Monica, all the time" television coverage, isn't exactly elevating the political dialogue in California either.

A case in point is Issa's appearance before Sacramento's Comstock Club on Tuesday. In response to a question about whether he would vote to impeach President Clinton, Issa said he felt the administration's purported search of FBI files on Republicans and the cronyism Clinton showed during his first term was enough "to throw the bum out," but Clinton was re-elected anyway.

"My wife calls (Clinton) a slut," a smiling Issa told the startled crowd of business people. "And I will not disagree with my wife in public."

American presidents have been called a lot of things over the years, but this could be a first for that particular pejorative.

Fong made a bid for the civility vote the next day, criticizing Issa's comment as inappropriate. "It was a poor choice of words," he said.

As for Fong, he may be the state treasurer and running hard for the Republican Senate nomination, but he can keep his campaign behind closed doors as far as an exclusive downtown Los Angeles club is concerned.

That was bad mojo for the 103-year-old club, which hasn't much liked reporters since stories about its alleged discrimination against women, minorities and Jews were spilled over the Los Angeles newspapers during the late 1980s.

Reporters and photographers covering the Fong event were escorted into the dining room where the candidate was speaking and basically told to stay there and keep their grubby hands off the cutlery.

After the speech, Fong met reporters at the back of the room for follow-up questions. When the noise proved a problem, Fong, trailed by a half dozen reporters, moved to the hall outside the dining room.

Within moments, a club official appeared, warning that he'd be fired if club members saw reporters and TV cameras in their sacrosanct hallways.

What about a small room cut off from the hallway by swinging doors, Fong's staffers asked. No, they were told, the reporters could still be seen behind the glass panels of the polished wood doors.

With the club official wringing his hands and tapping his foot, the impromptu press conference was quickly wrapped up, apparently before any of the members who pay the club's $10,000 plus entry fee realized who had invaded their downtown sanctuary.